Diana Documentary: The Princes' "Regret" Over Their Final Phone Call

THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE and Prince Harry have spoken about coping with the loss of their mother, the late Diana Princess of Wales, to mark the 20th anniversary of her death. In the new one-off television documentary, scheduled to air this evening on ITV, the brothers speak openly about their childhood and relationship with their mother.

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Featuring her closest family and friends, the Duke has said that the documentary is made by "those who knew her best" and details her efforts to give them a normal childhood, along with her final letters and phone call.

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In what is heralded as their most honest and extensive interviews to date, the Prince and the Duke disclosed their regret over their last conversation with their mother. The two young princes - who were 15 and 12 at the time of the accident - recalled how their last conversation with their mother was brief, and they had been desperate to run off and play whilst with their father at Balmoral.

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The Duke said the short conversation still weighs on his mind "quite, quite heavily", while Prince Harry admitted he would regret it for the rest of his life. “I can’t really necessarily remember what I said, but all I do remember is probably, you know, regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was,” he said.

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In the 90-minute documentary, they open their mother’s own home photograph album, featuring pictures of the princes as children, as a way of sharing with the public "happiness and the warmth that we had with her".

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The two brothers also detailed the pranks that their mother, who they describe as a “total kid through and through”, would play on them, including sending the Duke “the rudest cards you can imagine” to him at boarding school. “One of her mottos to me was: ‘you can be as naughty as you want, just don’t get caught,’” said Prince Harry. As a result, the Duke, who now has his own children Prince George and Princess Charlotte, predicts she would have been an “absolute nightmare” grandmother.

"She’d love the children to bits, but she’d be an absolute nightmare," said the Duke. "She’d come and go and she’d come in probably at bath time, cause an amazing amount of scene, bubbles everywhere, bathwater all over the place and then leave."

"I want to make as much time and effort with Charlotte and George as I can because I realise that these early years particularly are crucial for children, and having seen, you know, what she did for us," he added.